(The latest installment in an on-going series, this post will recount relevant space news that you may have missed while out enjoying your weekend. It's not an exhaustive list--to get that, I recommend clicking through to the blogs in our blogroll--but it should contain the highlights, as least as I see them.)

This weekend was, it seems, all about conferences.

Several members of the X PRIZE staff were at the NewSpace 2008 conference just outside of Washington, DC. I took some notes and some videos, but for those looking for detailed play-by-play, I refer you to Clark's invaluable live blogging over at Hobby Space (you can start here and surf forwards). At the conference, I had a chance to speak with (and shoot some video of) members of Google Lunar X PRIZE teams Odyssey Moon, Astrobotic, and STELLAR. I know that Quantum3 was there as well, but we didn't link for a video shoot. Anyway, stay tuned to see some of that video soon.

While at the conference, Odyssey Moon celebrated the 39th anniversary of the Apollo 11 egress onto the lunar surface by making a big announcement about a new customer and a proposed second mission. Kudos to them!

Elsewhere in the USA, there was the Space Elevator Conference and a fair amount of space discussion at a political conference called Netroots Nation. There's some good commentary on the Elevator Conference here, some living blogging here, and some video of the Netroots Nation space stuff here.

In Japan, JAXA released a website with some information about a conceptual crewed lunar program. I haven't had a chance to surf through the full thing, but it's always good to see more nations thinking about lunar exploration (and more potential business for Google Lunar X PRIZE teams!).

Lastly, best wishes to blogger and mystery man extraordinaire Ray from Space Prizes, who is taking a hiatus. Good luck to him and his (growing) family! We'll miss his updates; but hopefully my fellow here on the Launch Pad can help fill the void.